Conference Agenda

Learning environments have increasingly been conceptualised as educational space, foregrounding the interrelation of pedagogy, spatial design and social practice rather than treating space as a neutral container for learning (OECD, 2013; Barrett et al., 2015). Effective uses of learning environments are often discussed in relation to Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs), which seek to align spatial configurations with contemporary pedagogical approaches. While research on Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) has produced substantial evidence on the effects of spatial configuration on learning processes, much of this work remains focused on architectural typologies, technological infrastructures or adult-led design processes (Dumont et al., 2010; Cleveland & Fisher, 2014). Far less attention has been paid to learning environments conceptualised, analysed and reconfigured by children themselves, particularly in primary school contexts.

This study focuses on educational space as a socio-material practice emerging from children’s systematic engagement with interior learning environments. Drawing on empirical research conducted within the European CLEAR project (CLEAR 2025), an Erasmus+ strategic partnership for innovation focusing on pedagogical interior architecture, the contribution examines how a group of primary school children conceptualised their school as a wellbeing-oriented learning environment and how this child-generated spatial knowledge informed changes extending from a dedicated learning space to the whole school. The empirical focus lies on a primary school in a socially and structurally challenging context, allowing for an analysis of how educational space is produced under conditions of inequality, limited resources and high everyday demands.

The central research questions guiding the contribution are:

How do children conceptualise educational space when invited to analyse their school as a place of wellbeing, stress, and belonging?

How do child-generated spatial concepts translate into interior design interventions and changes at school level?

How can educational space be theorised as a process shaped by user-generated knowledge rather than predefined design models?

The theoretical framework combines research on educational space, socio-material approaches to learning environments (Fenwick et al., 2011), and critical perspectives on ILEs that emphasise use, interpretation and contextual responsiveness over formal design intentions (Woolner, 2018; Sigurðardóttir & Hjartarson, 2016). Rather than positioning ILEs as normative or technology-driven solutions, the contribution conceptualises educational space as processual and contingent, shaped through everyday practices and interior design negotiations.

The originality of the proposed contribution lies in its focus on children as a young user-research group whose spatial analyses and wellbeing-oriented design concepts inform school-wide learning environment development. By combining a child-centred, longitudinal perspective with post-occupancy and interior design analysis, this study extends existing research on learning environments beyond adult-centred planning models. Situated within the context of the CLEAR project, the study contributes empirically grounded insights into how educational space can be conceptualised as a context-sensitive, user-informed, and interior-design-driven practice, offering a differentiated perspective on learning environments under conditions of social inequality and institutional constraint.

Internationally, school systems are responding to social, technological, and demographic change through the redesign of school architecture and learning environments. One increasingly adopted approach has been the development of Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs), which are often characterised by open-plan layouts, flexible spatial configurations, and an emphasis on collaborative pedagogical practices (Dovey & Fisher, 2014). Within policy and design discourse, ILEs are frequently positioned as inherently supportive of inclusion and participation. However, the effects of these spatial innovations are not inherently uniform or automatic (Woolner et al., 2018; Page et al., 2024a). Instead, ILEs shape educators’ everyday professional practices in ways that are mediated by specific cultural, organisational, and relational contexts.

This research project examines how inclusion is enacted within ILEs in Swedish compulsory schools, with a particular focus on how teachers and special educators work to create conditions for belonging for students with higher educational needs. The project is theoretically grounded in the Spaces of Belonging framework (Page et al., 2024a; 2024b), which conceptualises inclusion as a relational and situated process through which learners come to experience safety, recognition, and legitimate participation. Thus, the aim of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of how educators themselves actively work to create and sustain spaces of belonging within these environments, explored through the following research questions:

1. How do educators understand and facilitate inclusion for students within Innovative Learning Environments?
2. How are relational, pedagogical, and material dimensions combined and distributed across professional roles in practices of creating belonging?
3. What tensions arise in relation to belonging and how are these tensions negotiated in educators’ everyday work?

Situated within Sweden’s decentralised education system, where municipalities exercise significant autonomy over school design and organisation, the project offers strong European relevance. It demonstrates that inclusion in ILEs is not determined exclusively by architectural innovation, but also by the work of educators. By foregrounding educators’ work, the project contributes to critical European debates on the design of educational spaces and the organisation of educational personnel.

Across Europe, schools are being redesigned as Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) to support resilient, inclusive and student-centred learning. Yet new buildings rarely deliver pedagogical change on their own: teachers and teams must develop shared understandings, spatial competence, and workable forms of shared control. This paper reports a mixed-methods substudy (2023-2025) within a longitudinal project (2019-2026) in a Swedish K-9 school purpose-built as an ILE.

Educational space is increasingly discussed as a response to social transformations that challenge schools to be both future-oriented and equitable. In this discussion, Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) are often presented as architectural and organisational answers to demands for flexibility, collaboration, and personalised learning. At the same time, the idea of student-centred learning (SCL) remains contested. What is labelled student-centred can, in practice, drift into individualisation: more individual work, less whole-class dialogue, and higher expectations on students' self-regulation without adequate scaffolding. This matters not only for learning outcomes but also for democratic aims, because participation is structurally dependent on how teaching is organised in everyday practice (Aspelin, 2014).

To connect pedagogy, organisation, and space, we refer to Baars et al. (2023), who argue that relationships between innovative pedagogies and physical learning environments should be understood relationally: as a network of psychosocial and physical aspects that users continuously interpret, negotiate and stabilise. A key implication is that physical design is not deterministic. The experienced supportiveness of space depends on system conditions (e.g., shared control, rule clarity, coordination) and on users' opportunities to participate in design, adaptation, and ongoing discourse. Drawing on a multidimensional conceptualisation of student-centred learning (Bremner, 2021) and Baars et al. psychosocial-physical relational approach, we analyse (1) teachers' understandings of student-centred learning, (2) an implementation gap between planned and enacted lessons, and (3) associations between perceived student-centred learning efficacy and psychosocial/spatial conditions.

Data comprise open-ended questionnaire responses (n=56), pre/post lesson evaluations from a teacher workshop (n=51/25), and a compiled questionnaire combining validated scales with student-centred learning items (n=48). This paper explores how teachers' perspectives illuminate the emergence of Educational Space for SCL in a new ILE school. We address three questions:

RQ1: What are teachers' beliefs about SCL and the challenges of implementing SCL in an ILE?

RQ2: Is there a difference in how teachers evaluate an SCL-planned lesson (before) and its execution (after)?

RQ3: How does teachers' perceived SCL efficacy relate to other factors shaping teachers' being, doing and relating at school?

Findings indicate diverse teacher conceptions of student-centred learning and recurring challenges (motivation, need for structure, collaboration constraints). Teachers rated formative assessment, adapting to needs, and relevant skills lower after enactment than during planning, and perceived supportiveness of the ILE design correlated strongly with student-centred efficacy.

Taken together, the findings support a relational view of Educational Space. The ILE is not simply a backdrop for pedagogy but becomes supportive (or obstructive) through how teaching teams coordinate, distribute responsibility, and stabilise routines for sharing control. The significant drop in ratings for formative assessment and adapting to needs after lesson enactment suggests that these SCL dimensions are especially sensitive to the alignment between spatial possibilities (e.g., availability of suitable zones and surfaces for feedback cycles), organisational conditions (time, grouping, access to smaller rooms), and psychosocial conditions (team coherence, confidence to experiment, psychological safety). We discuss implications for researching and designing Educational Space as a sociomaterial and team-mediated project.

The design of learning environments plays a key role in shaping educational experiences (Kowaltowski et al., 2024). Pedagogical innovations often lead to a demand for appropriate spatial configurations of the physical learning environment (Dovey & Fisher, 2014), but the translation of pedagogical concepts into spatial principles depends on the direction prioritized by policy (Hofverberg & Sigurdson, 2025; Cormio et al., in review). In the contemporary context of spatial challenges for changing pedagogies, this doctoral research project will focus on the spatial environment in which we host inclusive education, a concept subject to ongoing European and international political discourse. This research is situated within the context of Flanders, Belgium, where a new policy initiative for inclusive education has recently been launched.
Connecting inclusive education to appropriate learning spaces is likely to introduce new challenges in designing the physical learning environment. Yet, empirical research on the potential of the physical environment to meet the needs of all teachers and learners remains limited (Alterator et al., 2022; Stevens & Balendonck, in press). In recent years, critical voices have emerged within the field of pedagogical research regarding more innovative learning environments, especially open-plan layouts, highlighting students' negative experiences, such as overstimulation, distraction, and poor acoustics (Charteris et al., 2024; Dovey & Fisher, 2014). This tendency is also emerging in European political discourse, in favour of a return to traditional classroom typologies. Consequently, this has led to a rather polarized debate about the design of learning spaces, with little attention given to the range of spaces that exist between traditional and innovative learning environments.
Adopting a spatial lens, the research project is situated at the intersection of three key concepts: inclusion, pedagogy, and the design of the physical learning environment. While the discourse on physical learning environments from a pedagogical perspective is centered around the duality of the traditional enclosed classroom versus the innovative open learning landscape, the architectural perspective thereon is more nuanced. As architectural researchers, we argue for the unaddressed potential of “in-between spaces”, referring to spaces that exist in between designated and physically demarcated rooms within a range of different learning spaces. This shift in focus broadens the debate about learning environments beyond ‘traditional’ and ‘innovative’ settings. By conceptualizing the meaning of “in-between spaces” in educational environments, we can initiate a more nuanced discussion. With this approach, we aim to determine various spatial possibilities for educators to facilitate inclusive pedagogical concepts. Therefore, the following research question will be addressed in the PhD proposal: ‘How can physical “in-between spaces” in learning environments facilitate the social and pedagogical objectives of inclusive education?’
A qualitative research design will be adopted to explore the spatial and didactic potential of “in-between spaces” for inclusive learning environments. We propose a methodological approach that integrates architectural and pedagogical research methods, including spatial plan analysis, as well as immersive ethnographic techniques, to conceptualize this “in-between space”.
The empirical data and findings that will result from the studies aim to provide valuable insights into the pedagogical field on the behavior, perceptions, and spatial needs of teachers and learners regarding inclusive education. This approach is expected to generate additional research opportunities concerning the didactic role of learning spaces. Consequently, this doctoral research contributes to the growing significance of interdisciplinary collaboration within the intersectional research domains of inclusion, pedagogy, and the spatial design of learning environments (Cleveland et al., 2025).